


Panacea

by BeautifulFiction



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulFiction/pseuds/BeautifulFiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been here before: numb and lost, a ship without its anchor and no compass to guide him home. He had stood at a fresh-turned grave and tried to understand how something he had thought would last forever had come to an end.</p><p>Except that back then, it had been for Sherlock, and of course he had achieved the impossible; he had come back. Mary was beautiful, compassionate, witty and kind, but she wasn't that clever, or that cruel.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Note: Please do not redistribute my fanfiction on other archives or sites such as goodreads or ebooks tree without my express permission. Thank you :)</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Panacea

He had been here before: numb and lost, a ship without its anchor and no compass to guide him home. He had stared, stupid and mute, as the police spoke with gentle words. He had borne a funeral that felt like a dream – not even a nightmare, because it was too unimaginable to believe; he had stood at a fresh-turned grave and tried to understand how something he had thought would last forever had come to an end.

Except that, back then, it had been for Sherlock, and of course he had achieved the impossible; he had returned. Mary was beautiful, compassionate, witty and kind, but she wasn't that clever, or that cruel. She was gone, sharp and sudden, like the cut of a knife, like the car accident that had killed her, and John was left trying to understand.

It made no sense. She had been here, right _here_. He could still smell her perfume and feel the curl of her smaller hand in his. He could still see the quiet delight in her eyes as she selected a pair of lower heels to wear, pandering to his male pride even though he told her he didn't care if his wife was taller than him. He could hear her voice, soft and passionate in the darkness of the night, strong and sure in the light of day, and he couldn't comprehend how all that could be over – consigned to nothing but the inaccurate canvas of his memories.

He knew what people thought, that she was just some way to fill the hole that Sherlock had left in his life, but God, they were wrong. So wrong. Mary had not tried to take Sherlock's place. She had seen John's loss and acknowledged it, encouraged him to face it and realise that it would always be with him. His grief was a scar to bear, but in her company he had felt as if there was a chance that one day it would be old and silver, painless at last, and fond nostalgia would be all it brought to mind.

Mary had not dragged him to his feet and pulled him through his pain. She had sat at his side and waited until he had the strength to get up on his own. 

He loved her for that and a thousand other things, from the way she made him laugh at himself to the way she held her own against Sherlock once he returned. She had earned Sherlock's respect, and after a while, something akin to friendship had grown between them. For a time, less than a year once the shock and fury at Sherlock's deception faded, life was the best it had ever been. John had everything he could want, and it was more than worth the struggle of the forty years that came before it to enjoy the halcyon days that they shared.

He should have known it was too good to last.

******

People offered their condolences: weak words that fell on deaf ears as his grip tightened around his cane, brought out of retirement once more as grief made a nest in his leg and shivered in the tremor of his hand. It was the only thing he felt, that sharp stab and ticklish shudder. The rest of him was driven to senselessness: his mind too shocked to register the truth, his heart too disbelieving to break. He kept expecting her to come home and press a kiss to his lips, to warm him with the stroke of her hands and the elegance of her embrace. All he had to do was wait.

Yet she never came. A day became several, the funeral little more than punctuation in the riddle of his waking hours and sleepless nights. Friends they had shared went through the script of their own sadness, following society's dictates: meaningless offers of assistance, flowers he couldn't stand to see and gentle touches he longed to shrug off and disdain. None of them were her. None of them mattered.

Only one person kept their sorrow to themselves. Sherlock offered him nothing. He made no promises and voiced no regrets. If John had the strength in him, he would have raged against the coldness of the man he called his friend, but his spirit was dead and cold, sleeping at Mary’s side in the unforgiving earth. His tongue was leaden and his heart a stone, so he matched Sherlock's silence on the subject, too blind and indifferent to notice anything but the hollows where his happiness had been.

******

'A spare key to Baker Street.' The metal snicked quietly on the kitchen counter of the flat he had shared with Mary. Just his now; another home that had become nothing but a shell once the one who filled its other half was absent. 'In case you need it.'

John frowned, dragging his heavy eyes up to meet Sherlock's face and hating him for his composure. Solemn, yes, but vibrant and alive where Mary was not. It was an affront, a perversion, and for one horrible moment he almost wished their positions were reversed. That Sherlock's bones were turning to dust beneath the soil and Mary lived, her smile as bright as her carefully polished wedding ring.

'Why would I?' His voice rasped up his throat, but there was no force to it. He sounded done in, weary and defeated, too broken to even consider the mercy of the gun that still lay in his bedside drawer.

Sherlock's lips twisted in a mirthless smile-cum-grimace. 'You won't, but it's there anyway.' He wavered on the threshold of the door; Sherlock never came into their flat, not properly. It had bothered John, once, but now he was glad those posh shoes had never walked the floors that carried his and Mary's footsteps. This was not Sherlock's domain, and it never would be.

Briefly, John thought Sherlock would speak – would break his self-imposed silence and add some trite words or false assurances, but nothing came forth. He just met John's eyes, bold and unabashed, before turning away and closing the door behind his back, taking the last of the life left in this home-of-yesterday with him.

Mary was dead, and now these rooms were John's mausoleum.

******

He used to complain the bed was too narrow. Now it was a far flung landscape of barren, loveless terrain. Sleep would not come to such a desolate place, and John's hand rested in the hollow left by Mary's body as the hours of darkness bled away. Unconsciousness found him in fits and starts, but it was never enough. There was nothing like respite, and John stared, dry-eyed, into the shadows. 

His only company.

The fourth night broke him, but not in the way his therapist would have preferred. Ella expected tears and catharsis, not this. Not him limping around London in the blackest hours of the night, almost hoping for something to happen. Something he would feel, not just tonight, but for days after. He wanted something to punish, or maybe to be punished himself, because how could he do this? How could he fit back into an indifferent world?

He did not know where he was going, but his body acted without thought, his feet guiding him through uncharted parts of London until he reached his destination. More than an hour after he started out, he leant on his cane, staring at the door to 221. It stood before him, patient and still, the brass numbers gleaming softly in the streetlight. It hadn't been home for far too long, and he _hated_ that this was where he came when life brought him low. After all this time, this place was his refuge, and resentment burned like acid in his gut. Not because of the building, but the man within. Mary had been his lover and his wife, but through it all, Sherlock was still his panacea.

What did that say about John?

The key graunched in the lock, a brutal attack on the tumblers, and he shouldered his way inside, his cane not even touching the floor as he limped up the stairs. The flat's front door was given a similar treatment, and John's chest heaved as he stared around the empty rooms. It looked achingly familiar, as if the clock had flipped back through the years to a moment before his world fell apart and was made anew only to crumble to ash once more. Sherlock's presence was everywhere, indelibly imprinted on every surface, and John could not work out if the knot in his chest was agony or fury. 

He didn't want to be here, living like this and locked in the passage of mourning. His hand shook as he pressed the heel of his palm to his left eye, his ribs shuddering as his breath caught: the stoic dam of his self-control beginning to breach. 

Thank God Sherlock wasn't here. John didn't think he could bear being the target of that critical, analytical gaze. Not now. He didn't know what Sherlock would deduce, didn't care what he'd pick out from the mire of John's expression, but it was a blessing to be spared. 

There was nowhere left for him. His place had been with Mary, and now the life they had built together lay in ruins. Meanwhile, Sherlock had carried on: a universal constant. Their friendship remained stronger than any other John had known, but Baker Street was not his.

Too many houses, but no home.

He moved on autopilot, limping up to his old room. He didn't care what Sherlock had done to it in his absence, he needed the confines of its walls – definitive boundaries. A space that had never been Sherlock's or Mary's, but John's alone. A place where he had been happy, once.

It was neat, dust-free, and the bed was made; it was as if he hadn't left. Somehow, that cut him the deepest, and his body shook as grief finally knocked away the last bastions of his strength.

He barely noticed the scent of laundry detergent as he placed his cane aside, toeing out of his shoes and climbing, fully-clothed, beneath the covers. The pillow cradled his head as the mattress supported his body, and John curled tight on his side, his eyes screwed up and his teeth stabbing into his lip as the first shuddering sob cracked his heart in two.

He didn't bother smothering the noise. What was the point? Sherlock was off somewhere in London, chasing after the puzzle and answering the call of the Work – the only thing he cared about. No one would hear him but the skull downstairs on the mantelpiece, and it was hardly going to tell anyone his secrets.

His clothes tried to drown him, as thick and choking as his despair, and he clawed free of wool and cotton. The fabric swept away the tears from his face, but the flood was soon replaced as he pitched them to floor and huddled beneath the quilt, naked and defenceless against the onslaught of his anguish.

John wept, hot trails carving their path over his lined face and soaking his pillow. His arms crossed over his chest, a quasi-embrace. It was nothing like Mary's touch, but it was all he had, and here, in the peace of the place he loathed to call his sanctuary, he allowed himself to break.

It consumed him, blocking out the world. He did not hear quiet footsteps on the stairs nor the creak of the door. It was only when the mattress dipped that he drew in a sharp breath, recoiling in shock before he recognised the silhouette perched awkwardly on the edge of his bed. 

Sherlock was wearing that blue silk dressing gown. His hair was a mess and there was a pillow crease across his face. However, there was nothing tired in his expression. He surveyed John carefully, not uttering a word about the tears that still brimmed in his eyes or the heartache that cleaved him apart. It was not as if he could deny the evidence of it, blatant for anyone to see, and John was too far gone to consider hiding from Sherlock now.

Another sob hacked in his throat, unavoidable, and John bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut as the black abyss that had yawned in his chest since the day of the funeral finally threatened to swallow him whole. He barely noticed Sherlock shift at his side, nor the cool air kiss his skin as the quilt was lifted and a lean body slipped in next to him.

In another life, he would have squawked a protest, but he did not have the strength to resist as one arm wriggled under his body and the other curved over his torso. It was not an imprisonment; John could have banished him easily. One hard shove would have sent Sherlock off the edge of the mattress, but rather than splay and push away, John's fingers scrabbled at Sherlock's shoulders, gripping frantically as his desolation intensified. 

Long fingers cupped the back of his head, holding him steady as he shook, his breaths trapped in a staccato rhythm as his eyes burned and his temples began to throb. He buried his face in Sherlock's chest, sharp collarbones and flat planes – there was no deception here. He could not pretend it was Mary easing his pain as she had done in her time. Later, he would realise what a discredit that would have been, not just to her, but to Sherlock and himself as well. However, in that moment, it only enhanced his torment, and the whine in his throat was too raw to be considered pathetic.

Sherlock said nothing, offering neither words of comfort nor reproach. He maintained his silence, his chin resting on top of John's head and his embrace unquestioning. His body was an endless stretch of naked skin, his robe discarded. Only Sherlock would think that was appropriate, but as long minutes passed and John's tears began to ebb – the well dry, though his grief was far from spent – he realised that perhaps Sherlock had the right idea.

There was nothing erotic about this embrace, yet it was more intimate than any sexual act. The both of them were entirely exposed, flesh to flesh, one racing heart pressed to the solemn beat of another.

This was them, reduced to the most basic simplicity and shorn of all deceit. It was the balm of human comfort; a potent reminder that even when John was stripped of who he had held so dear, there was still someone who cared enough to lay themselves bare and offer the wealth of their compassion – carefully guarded as it was.

John's nose was blocked and his body exhausted, his muscles shivering in the wake of the storm and carved apart by its passing, but there was no judgement to be found in Sherlock's arms. He was resolute, as if John could scream or cry, rant or rave and he would not withdraw his comfort.

Anyone else would murmur meaningless words in an effort to soothe him, but Sherlock did not. Instead, like Mary had done years before, he accepted John's grief and regarded it as a necessity. He could not pull him back from the edge of the chasm, but John knew that Sherlock would break his fall. Everyone had given their apologies and looked at him with pain in their eyes, but what good did their pity do? None of them were here. None of them lay at his side, unapologetic and unashamed as he fell to pieces. None of them would help him put himself together again.

Except Sherlock.

'You left,' John croaked, his face still pressed hard against Sherlock's bare chest as he let out a tremulous breath, his body falling lax. 'After the funeral, you didn't stay.'

'You didn't want me to.' Sherlock's voice was a quiet rumble, all-consuming. It resonated through John's skin like a summer wind blowing through sand. 'You would have resented my presence. You needed to be alone.'

John blinked, his spiky eyelashes whispering against Sherlock's sternum as a realisation washed over him. Sherlock hadn't offered his condolences or pity because, ultimately, he knew they were useless. Words, however well-intentioned, were still nothing but empty promises. Instead, he had done what was necessary. He had given John solitude and privacy, but when John's need was obvious, he offered his unflinching support. 

It was the first step on a long road. Mourning was a mountain he had fought to climb before, and with Mary's help, John had managed. Now, it was Mary's loss that broke his world, and it was Sherlock who stood at his side and set him on the path that could help him heal.

His guiding light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> B xxx  
> [My Tumblr](http://the-pen-pot.tumblr.com)  
> [My Sherlock Fic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulFiction/works?fandom_id=133185)  
> [My Hobbit Fic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Kingmaker/works?fandom_id=873394)  
> [My Fullmetal Alchemist Fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulFiction_FMA/works)


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